Space X, Boeing facing NASA safety review
Musk’s drug use on podcast, missed deadlines spur agency to order look at workplace culture
NASA will investigate the workplace culture at SpaceX and Boeing, including drug use, less than a year before the two companies are scheduled to launch their first crewed missions to space, the agency confirmed Tuesday.
“NASA will be conducting a cultural assessment study in coordination with our commercial partners to ensure the companies are meeting NASA’s requirements for workplace safety, including the adherence to a drug-free environment,” Kathryn Hambleton, a spokeswoman at NASA headquarters in Washington, D.C., told the Houston Chronicle.
News of the probe first was reported Tuesday by the Washington
Post, which wrote that the “safety review” was prompted by a September podcast on which SpaceX founder Elon Musk smoked marijuana and drank whiskey.
William Gerstenmaier, NASA’s associate administrator for human exploration, told the Post that the review would examine “everything and anything that could impact safety,” including hours worked, drug policies and if safety concerns are taken seriously.
In statements Tuesday, both Boeing and SpaceX confirmed their commitment to safety.
“The culture at Boeing ensures the integrity, safety and quality of our products, our people and their work environment,” Boeing said in its statement. “As NASA’s trusted partner since the beginning of human spaceflight, we share the same values and are committed to continuing our legacy of trust, openness and mission success.”
SpaceX said it takes its mission from NASA to carry American astronauts to the International Space Station seriously.
“SpaceX actively promotes workplace safety and we are confident that our comprehensive drug-free workforce and workplace programs exceed all applicable contractual requirements,” the statement read.
Both companies were hired in 2014 by NASA to fly astronauts to the space station as a means of replacing the space shuttle program, which was shuttered in 2011. It’s not immediately clear if the review will impact the test flights scheduled for next year.
The review comes at a rough time for both NASA and SpaceX, as the space agency tries to negotiate hurdles that can be traced back to the end of the shuttle program and as Musk negotiates numerous scandals largely related to Tesla, his electric car company.
Keith Cowing, editor of NASA Watch, wrote on his website devoted to space news that the investigation could be problematic for the space program.
“NASA has run out of things to blame its own internal failures on so they go after two external partners to see if there is anything they can dig up,” he wrote. “The net result will probably be a delay to Boeing and SpaceX launches, which will make [Space Launch System rocket] delays look less bad, I guess.”
NASA woes
The loss of the space shuttle in 2011 was felt acutely over the course of just one week in October.
First, the Hubble Space Telescope — the groundbreaking observatory that was built to be serviced by the shuttle — stopped working.
Then, NASA’s Office of Inspector General released a report stating the launch of Orion — the spacecraft being built to take humans back to the moon — likely would be delayed because of cost and development problems with its SLS rocket.
And as if that weren’t enough, the launch of a Russia spacecraft transporting an American to the space station was aborted because of a rocket booster failure — the first incident of its kind in 35 years.
Of all the recent problems, the emergency landing of the Russian Soyuz highlighted the need for the commercial crew program to get up and running. Now, NASA pays Russia $82 million per seat to take astronauts to the space station, and for a short while after the aborted launch, American astronauts had no means of getting to the space station the U.S. has dumped billions of dollars into.
Russian officials have since said they found the source of the problem and rescheduled the next flight — originally expected to take off Dec. 20 — to Dec. 3.
In an effort to avoid the grounding of astronauts, the U.S. awarded Boeing and SpaceX contracts totaling $6.8 billion in 2014. The two companies initially were expected to launch crewed test flights this year.
But, like many space-related programs, their schedules have slipped. Now, SpaceX plans to launch an uncrewed flight test in January, with a crewed flight test the following June. Boeing’s changes are similar, with an uncrewed flight test in March and crewed flight test in August.
A NASA safety panel in October released a report calling into question both companies’ timelines and construction.
For example, it found that Boeing still has not completed several important tests on the parachute systems, heat shield and other components of the spacecraft. It also found that SpaceX was struggling with the parachute system.
The companies’ schedules to fly “have considerable risk and do not appear achievable given the number of technical issues yet to be resolved,” the panel.
Despite these delays, NASA already has announced the nine astronauts who will be the first to fly on Boeing and SpaceX vehicles.
Controversies
Musk’s SpaceX company has had many successes this year, including launching a Tesla automobile into space and sending its Dragon cargo ship to the space station 15 times.
But Musk has also been plagued with controversies. In an August interview with The New York Times in which he choked up several times, he said that “this past year has been the most difficult and painful year of my career.”
The interview came a week after Musk announced on Twitter that he had “funding secured” to take Tesla private. Musk eventually stepped down as chairman of Tesla, paying a $20 million fine to the Securities and Exchange Commission, which argued that the tweet constituted him lying to investors.
Additionally, Musk is being sued for defamation after calling a rescue volunteer trying to save children caught in a Thai cave this summer a “pedo” and “child rapist,” apparently without proof.
And then, of course, there was the podcast in which he smoked pot, which the Post reported is the cause of the NASA review announced Tuesday.
Cowing wrote on NASA Watch that it doesn’t matter what SpaceX or Boeing may or may not be smoking given their contributions to space exploration.
“SpaceX can reuse rockets and learned how to do so at a fraction of what it would have taken NASA to do so — if they even knew how, that is,” he wrote. “NASA has no rockets to reuse and they spent a billion dollars to make reusable shuttle engines disposable.”
It’s not clear how long the review will take, but Hambleton said NASA is serious about the investigation.
“We fully expect our commercial partners to meet all workplace safety requirements in the execution of our missions and the services they provide the American people,” according to the NASA statement.